The Jungle eBook

For three weeks after his injury Jurgis never got
up from bed. It was a very obstinate sprain;
the swelling would not go down, and the pain still
continued. At the end of that time, however, he
could contain himself no longer, and began trying
to walk a little every day, laboring to persuade himself
that he was better. No arguments could stop him,
and three or four days later he declared that he was
going back to work. He limped to the cars and
got to Brown’s, where he found that the boss
had kept his place—­that is, was willing
to turn out into the snow the poor devil he had hired
in the meantime. Every now and then the pain would
force Jurgis to stop work, but he stuck it out till
nearly an hour before closing. Then he was forced
to acknowledge that he could not go on without fainting;
it almost broke his heart to do it, and he stood leaning
against a pillar and weeping like a child. Two
of the men had to help him to the car, and when he
got out he had to sit down and wait in the snow till
some one came along.

So they put him to bed again, and sent for the doctor,
as they ought to have done in the beginning.
It transpired that he had twisted a tendon out of
place, and could never have gotten well without attention.
Then he gripped the sides of the bed, and shut his
teeth together, and turned white with agony, while
the doctor pulled and wrenched away at his swollen
ankle. When finally the doctor left, he told him
that he would have to lie quiet for two months, and
that if he went to work before that time he might
lame himself for life.

Three days later there came another heavy snowstorm,
and Jonas and Marija and Ona and little Stanislovas
all set out together, an hour before daybreak, to
try to get to the yards. About noon the last two
came back, the boy screaming with pain. His fingers
were all frosted, it seemed. They had had to
give up trying to get to the yards, and had nearly
perished in a drift. All that they knew how to
do was to hold the frozen fingers near the fire, and
so little Stanislovas spent most of the day dancing
about in horrible agony, till Jurgis flew into a passion
of nervous rage and swore like a madman, declaring
that he would kill him if he did not stop. All
that day and night the family was half-crazed with
fear that Ona and the boy had lost their places; and
in the morning they set out earlier than ever, after
the little fellow had been beaten with a stick by
Jurgis. There could be no trifling in a case
like this, it was a matter of life and death; little
Stanislovas could not be expected to realize that
he might a great deal better freeze in the snowdrift
than lose his job at the lard machine. Ona was
quite certain that she would find her place gone,
and was all unnerved when she finally got to Brown’s,
and found that the forelady herself had failed to
come, and was therefore compelled to be lenient.